Thus was lit the Jewish flame and "the Divine Spark" in the heart and mind of little Josh - a curious boy who yearned to know more about the origins of his family.
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It was in his eyes a secret ritual which was never explained, and it was only done once the drapes were drawn so that no neighbors could invade their privacy. The candle lighting ushered in the Jewish Sabbath on Friday evenings, but no one seemed to know that at all. Josh, from around the ages of 6-7, vividly recalls seeing his father's mother and his mother quietly lighting candles every Friday evening.Īs an adult, reflecting on this, Joshua is convinced that they had no idea of the meaning and significance of this ritual, practiced for generations in his family. Joshua Benavides grew up in Honduras as a child of a crypto-Jewish father who was not at all anxious to pass on to his son any knowledge or reference to his Jewish heritage (which was, in his eyes, a history of suffering and persecution). And those who were found still to be secretly practicing their ancestral religion in their hidden cellars were to be tortured to death until they repented and accepted Christianity, just before they breathed their very last breath. The other half who chose to remain in Spain, about 125,000, were forced to become Catholic. They went into exile to Turkey, Portugal and other Mediterranean countries with nothing but the clothes on their backs. In 1492, "when Columbus sailed the ocean blue," that very same year brought about the terrible end to what had been an illustrious chapter in the life of Spanish Jewry known as the "Golden Age." About half of the quarter-million Spanish Jews, or some 125,000 men, women and children, decided to leave everything behind. They most likely also fell out of favor because they had become too successful in many areas of Spanish life, and had amassed a share of the wealth of the nation by virtue of their success in many fields. He was a fanatical archbishop who demanded that the king and queen exile the Jews because they rejected Jesus as their savior. Queen Isabella had, in particular, become a fervent and intolerant Catholic and heeded the pernicious advice of her nefarious Inquisitor General, Torquemada. King Fernando and Queen Isabella, who ruled their kingdom at the end of the 15th century, had come under the sway of the Catholic Church.
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Most common of these was the mother and grandmother lighting candles on Friday night (the Sabbath eve) or eating crackers on the 15th of April (for Passover), said the rabbi. Having no Jewish books, guides or calendars (and certainly no teachers or rabbis whatsoever), and living in fear of discovery, most Jewish traditions slipped away in the course of the past 25 generations. Rabbi Warshaw believes that, like most Crypto Jews, as the generations passed on, the Benavides family gradually lost the bits of Judaism that their earlier generations had tried to pass on. Rabbis all throughout these border states have had many knocks on their doors by such individuals, wondering if they might be Jewish and seeking to learn more. Most never even realized that they had Jewish antecedents, but as they learn more about Jews in America, and the freedom in which they live, something has clicked as they recall remnants of Jewish rituals practiced by their parents or grandparents. Many thousands (perhaps even tens of thousands) of "secret Jews" from Central and South America have come to the United States, settling in the Southwestern states. "I admire these families for the perseverance, in spite of the overwhelming odds against their quest to maintain their Jewishness," the rabbi continued.
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They were forced to move from country to country, to support themselves as outcasts of Hispanic society and at the same time preserve their Jewish identity and heritage." It was the year that the Inquisition in Spain came to a head and half the Jewish population of Spain was expelled because they refused to convert to Catholicism.Īccording to Rabbi Efraim Warshaw of Temple Ner Tamid in Downey, "the Benavides family was one of the many tens of thousands of Spanish Jewish families who struggled for five centuries of persecution. Now it includes parents Josh and Miriam, grandmother Hilda, and the youngsters Ari, Shimshon, Asisah and Rafi.įor Jews, 1492 is much more than the year that Columbus set sail on the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. DOWNEY - It was a long journey of 500 years for the Benavides family to reclaim its Jewish roots.Their family goes back more than six centuries to the time of the Renaissance in Spain.